


A kiss...

by Wrathofscribbles



Series: Kisses... [14]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: IgNoct, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 16:51:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16268375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wrathofscribbles/pseuds/Wrathofscribbles
Summary: ... to pretend





	A kiss...

**Author's Note:**

> **Big bold reminder that Final Fantasy XV and all of its content is property of Square Enix.** I just like to play in the sandpit they've created for the fans.
> 
> I'll be honest, I didn't know _what_ I was setting out to write when I started this, I just keysmashed my way through it, but I kinda like how it's turned out, so. Here we go.

“I’m okay, I’m alright,” Noctis says amidst the mess of their limbs and the mop of fouled blonde hair stuck in his face - they _all_ desperately need a bath - and he sounds tired.  _Weary_ , almost, like the heavy mantle cast around his shoulders since birth and slowly pulling him under, drowning him in predestined responsibility, hasn’t yet been shed, still tangled around his feet and weighing him down.  Understandable given the fight that sent him knocking at death’s door, almost nudged him across that invisible threshold, a decade old bargain taking hold at the last possible second to drag him back to the realm of the living, burning and thrashing and _screaming_  on the throne until they’d emptied their entire supply of curatives over him.

He sounds weary, as if he’s aged a hundred years in the space of an hour, and Ignis makes a mental note to pull in every favour he’s amassed since the last sunrise to give Noctis some time, a precious commodity denied for so long.  He tugs leather free of his fingers, lays them over Noct’s and breathes a long sigh of relief at the warmth of them, the life in them, the expected twitch as if the contact still surprises, the twist of wrist so their palms touch  and -

Against all the odds he’s aliveand it takes more willpower than Ignis will ever admit to keep the sob locked in his throat, the tears at bay.

_He’s alive._

* * *

“I’m fine, it’s just a lingering ache,” Noctis says the following afternoon before Prompto can tear through their packs in hunt of curatives Ignis _knows_  aren’t there.  They haven’t had time to restock and the Armiger had echoed with a hollow emptiness the solitary time he’d brushed his hand through its protective shield in search of more, only to snatch his fingers back at the sharp hiss from Noctis and the grimace of pain he hadn’t been able to hide.  They sway as the airship does, the air currents outside not quite strong enough to warrant a turbulence warning over the intercom, but just enough to make it a somewhat unpleasant journey for his stomach even with Aranea at the helm.

There’s a guilty look on Noctis’s face now, a secret in the drop of his eyes from Ignis’s stare and how they dart around the bare bones of their transport (stripped back to its shell and gutted of all daemonic influence), the leaden drop of his hand from where it had been rubbing at his chest, and Ignis knows that stretch of skin, knows what the t-shirt and jacket hide even though he hasn’t seen Noctis bare in _years_.  He still sees cruel metal sliding free of his lover’s ribcage in his nightmares, hears the _sound_  of it, feels the chill of Noct’s skin under his hands as he searched for breath or pulse or _any_  sign of life, still has to scrub his fingers raw to the point of bleeding just to pretend it isn’t Noct’s that was under his nails and all over his hands, his wrists, swiped over his cheek and through his hair just yesterday.

“Are you sure -”

“I’m fine, Ignis,” and with the whip of that cutoff is a glance, the very same he’s faced innumerable times in the past.  _Please don’t make a big deal out of this_ , that look begs, and he snaps his mouth shut with the resolution that there _will_  be a discussion later when they don’t have an audience.  If Noctis is attempting to sweep such a simple gesture under the rug then he is _not_  fine and there’s more than just a “lingering ache” bothering him.

* * *

It takes far longer than expected to extricate themselves from the swarm and murmuring thanks of the survivors crammed into the relative safety of Lestallum’s walls like tinned sardines, the remaining Glaives tasked with guarding those civilians and the bursts of magic from their fingertips when they attempt to shake Noct’s hand, reacting to and reaching for the call of his own even when a stumbled step back tucks him into Ignis’s side as he angles this way and that, makes himself into a buffer of sorts to grant Noctis some _space_  from being overwhelmed in the crowd.

Word spreads like wildfire of the King’s return, drawing every resident to their location like moths to that very flame, an endless sea of faces, an endless wave of bodies, all jostling around and pressing in and -

_Hand over his, fingers between his, a single warning squeeze before the world falls apart in phantom-blue shards and metal and ozone sting his nose._

\- he steps onto the rooftop he’d run off to with Noctis in tow during the festival all those years ago, stumbles from the havoc warping plays on his balance, and leads Noctis to the door tucked away in the shadows with all the chaotic lack of grace of a newborn chocobo.

Once upon a time he might have hesitated with his key in that door, might have felt embarrassment at drawing Noctis into an apartment so bare and devoid of life, used as little more than a safe place to rest his head at night... but there is no room to care, now, when it’s new purpose is a place of retreat and respite in a city waking from long slumber, and a reminder of a happier night when magic was a hectic buzz under Noctis’s skin and bright in his eyes and his kisses, smoke and fire and desire burning from all the excitement and somewhere in this apartment he still owns those bloody cosplay robes.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” he says as he lights the candles scattered around with but a snap of his fingers and a gentle pull on the magic Noctis wound through his body when they were children.

“Humble abode, but not _home?”_ Noctis returns, following along as he makes a beeline for the living area and the small corner set aside as a kitchen.  Born on a soft breath, he doubts he was meant to hear the question, but he affords Noctis a glance over his shoulder all the same, the barest hint of a smile and the brutal slash of honesty from a heart still bleeding ripples of terror from the throne room and death’s grip pulling Noctis from him with every passing second.

“There is no home without you in it, Noctis.”

* * *

There is caution in his kiss, in the slow weave of hands down his arms, his ribs, over his back and the myriad scars there, the partial numbness in the ashen cracks spread by the power of the Lucis Caelum line.  There is a distance between them he cannot cross, not yet, not without knowing its cause, and he draws back from the chaste press of Noct’s lips - so strange, so _wrong_ , compared to the force of nature he used to be, a storm on his lap and in his hands and on his tongue and tearing him apart at the seams until all he knew was them and all he felt was Noctis - with a noise of concern in the back of his throat.  There’s something amiss, something _off_  since he’d jerked awake on a marble floor when the ragged mess of his chest healed over, something Ignis can’t put his finger on but is very much _there_.

So he allows the distance Noctis seems to crave, picks his way around the stacks of books and ancient text making a maze of his floor, brews more tea while Noctis fidgets on the sofa and draws in breath like he’s about to speak countless times, only to close his mouth on the words again.  Ignis half expects to glance over only to find him gone, snatched away by fickle gods or his own indecision, but there he is, perched on the edge of the cushion like he’s ready to bolt at a second’s notice, desperate to flee and yet determined to stay and whatever wars in him so has Ignis’s heart fracturing just a little further.  Even now he knows no peace, when he’d won it for a world gone to ruin.

“Are you going to tell me what has you so unsettled, or will I need to spend the next five hours guessing?”

“I’m not unsettled!” Squawked far too fast to be anything other than a poorly veiled _lie_ , some satisfaction to be had in the way Noctis visibly _wilts_  under his stare and slouches back into the corner as he stirs exactly four times for each cup before straining and trashing the teabags.  “I’m not!  I’m just... not... entirely comfortable.”

_“Noctis.”_

_“Ignis.”  
_

He sighs, counts to five because this is Noctis and he loves him as much as he wants to throttle him even if he _did_ lose him for a decade and then feel the dead weight of him in his arms, then navigates his way back to the sofa and plonks down beside Noctis and hands over the tea.  He sets his own on the floor, certain one more extra weight on the coffee table will send the fragile old thing crumbling to dust right there in the middle of the room, then twists around to fully face Noctis, folds his legs up under himself and plants elbows on knees, chin on palms.  And fixes him with A Look.

“Start talking.”

“Nothing’s _wrong_  -”

“Noctis, for the sake of my sanity and your well-being, please stop pretending everything is fine when it’s not.  There is something wrong and I can’t help if you don’t let me in.”

For a few weighted, horrible minutes, he looks at Noctis and sees the barrier between them, the protections his lover has put in place during that decade he’d been missing within the confines of the Crystal, entombed somewhere Ignis couldn’t reach and suffering something he can’t wipe down and stitch together and dab at with a potion.  He looks at Noctis and sees the distance between them and fears that no running leap will clear it.

But something fractures in that defensive glare, and Noctis curls further inward, makes himself even smaller and so at odds with the _King_  who swept through Insomnia and the daemons infesting it - and then he starts talking.

* * *

By the time he’s finished speaking of an altered Altissia and chocobo races around the city and tracking down flighty little chicks getting themselves wedged in doorways, _moogles_ on windowsills and fireworks in a cloudless sky and a day’s fleeting happiness with an ancient fennec fox crumbling under the suffocating weight of the Draconian’s wrath, Ignis is certain there’s nothing left of his heart to break.  If not for Noctis’s suffering, then because of the shadows in his eyes, the lines of stress still gracing his forehead and bracketing his mouth with premature signs of age, then because he looks _haunted_ , and scared, and so very, very tired, devoid of _hope_.

Carbuncle, a loyal companion by Noct’s side from the day of his birth, had only meant to _help_  in giving him a break from the relentless beat of destiny demanding he pick up the pace... and in doing so had weakened his grasp on reality, until all Ignis can think to do in response is something neither forgotten Astral or Noctis himself would expect of him, anything he’d never dream of doing under normal circumstances.  Singing for one, swearing like a drunken pirate for another, copying the late Chancellor’s wardrobe choices at a push...

Or simply upending a glass of ice water over Noctis’s head without warning, laughing as he sputters and yells and takes several Astral names in vain, scrambling off the sofa only to shake his head and frantically wipe at his face and round on him with eyes affronted and all but snapping sparks.

He bats Noctis’s hands aside so he can cup his face instead, close the distance between them until Noctis goes quiet and still and flutters his hands like he doesn’t know where to put them.  He sweeps his thumbs under those lovely eyes of his, the dark blue of a summer’s night sky, dares a smile as he leans his forehead to Noct’s and now the hesitance is _his_ , unsure of his own footing, his own path, if he’s _enough_  to keep his lover grounded through the worst of the consequences for cheating a predestined death.

“This is real, Noctis.  _I_  am real.  You are free and safe and loved and I will remind you of this every day if I must, in whatever creative fashion I must.  I swear it.”

Noct’s voice, when he replies, is a choked, raspy thing and his hands are vicious and desperate where they fist in his shirt, _cling_  to his shirt.  “No more pretending.”

“No more pretending,” Ignis agrees, and drops a kiss to his nose because he can.   Then his chin, and jaw, and cheek, and brow, and both eyes, until unsteady laughter is a treasured, freely given gift.

_I love you._


End file.
